[00:44:38] Chalene Johnson : Like, okay, when did these voices begin? How long did it last? Is it possible? And that’s what today’s testimony was really all about. Her attorney, they call him Big Red, Reddington, was basically during cross-examination drilling their expert witnesses and saying, “Okay, she told you Was it not true that she was having these thoughts?
[00:45:06] Chalene Johnson : Did you ever ask her if the thoughts were voices? Because that is part of, as I understand it, and I’m not an expert here, but as, as I understand it, and I’m trying desperately to understand it, that in order to meet the definition of postpartum psychosis, she needs to have been hearing voices for an extended period of time.
[00:45:28] Chalene Johnson : I’ve heard everything between four and seven days. But they’re saying, the prosecution is saying she only heard voices for 18 minutes. The defense is saying, “Not true. She was hearing voices and hadn’t told anyone that.” She was still delusional even seven days later when she woke from, I guess, an induced coma-type state, right?
[00:46:00] Chalene Johnson : Like, so she had lots of different surgeries. She was under anesthesia. She had these horrific injuries. She’s in the hospital. Her children have passed. She is being comforted by the hospital’s chaplain. And the chaplain testified, as I mentioned in a previous episode, that the first words that she had with Lindsay, Lindsay said, “I’m so happy my children are safe.”
[00:46:30] Chalene Johnson : And the chaplain basically responded in a very theological way and said, “Your children are now safe with God.” And, uh, this is just a question. Does that mean she was still in a state of psychosis? If, in her mind, if she’s believing, “Oh my gosh, my children are safe,” is that a state of psychosis? I don’t know.
[00:46:51] Chalene Johnson : Or is that just a state of delusion? I don’t know what the legal definition would be in that regard. But that was seven days after the children were killed, and she’s still in that state And that’s the piece for me that I’m unclear on, like how all this relates to postpartum. And I, I don’t wanna go off on a tangent, so let me stay focused.
[00:47:13] Chalene Johnson : But that is what they were trying to determine, obviously, in court today. They’re trying to figure out how long did this last? Why did Lindsay never report hearing voices? Or perhaps the question today they’re trying to understand was why is it no one asked her if she was hearing voices? Like, she explained that she felt like she might wanna hurt the children.
[00:47:41] Chalene Johnson : She told Patrick that. She told her own mother that. But Patrick and her own mother aren’t psychiatrists. They’re not psychologists. They didn’t ask her, “Do you feel this way because you’re hearing voices?” And so that’s what they’re trying to figure out today. Was Lindsay deliberately carrying out a plan of murder-suicide, or was she experiencing a psychotic break that destroyed, that disabled her ability to understand what was reality, that disabled her ability to control what she was doing?
[00:48:21] Chalene Johnson : You can watch a million different recaps of what happened each day in the trial. You can also download the transcripts from the testimony each day of the trial, or you can just tune in here, where I’m gonna give you a brief synopsis. And I’m gonna do my very, very best to keep this as unbiased as possible, as neutral as possible.
[00:48:45] Chalene Johnson : But by the same token, I personally should also say that I’m biased. I mean, aren’t all humans biased? I, I’m biased based on quite a few things. First of all would be that the, the defense counsel is impeccable. He is so skilled. He’s one of the best attorneys I’ve ever seen. And the two female prosecutors, boy, they are in over their heads.
[00:49:17] Chalene Johnson : And their experts, ’cause that’s what it’s really gonna boil down to, I think, is a battle between the experts. And based on that, Monday really did, in my estimation, kinda lean towards the prosecution. In fact, I’m gonna play you a few clips where I was like, “Oh, okay, they’re in big trouble.” On Monday, the prosecution’s opportunity, basically they gave jurors a medical explanation that did not require believing that Lindsay was psychotic.
[00:49:50] Chalene Johnson : There were two doctors, Dr. Mack and Dr. Helbron. I think that’s how you pronounce it. And essentially, they both argued that Lindsay was, she was, of course, mentally ill. She was depressed. She was suicidal. But that mental illness alone didn’t eliminate the fact that she had criminal responsibility. They testified that the commanding voices were suspicious.
[00:50:15] Chalene Johnson : I’m gonna play you this little clip. In all my years, never heard of an incident. He didn’t say it’s impossible, but he said never heard of anything like this.
[00:50:24] Clip: The way she described this as happening is that she heard a voice that she’d never heard before, experienced a, an hallucination, and she’s never experienced it since.
[00:50:36] Clip: But she only experienced it for the 18 minutes or so that it took to kill the children And to put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about. Very unusual. I’ve been doing this kind of evaluation for many, many years, and I’m always very careful when someone tells me that they experience a symptom only during the course of committing an offense.
[00:51:10] Chalene Johnson : Why are you careful when someone tells you that they only experience this voice during a criminal offense?
[00:51:20] Clip: Well, because it provides a convenient way of lessening your own culpability. I mean, it’s always possible, but as, as I said, I find it very, very rare. Whereas an explanation for why somebody did something, somebody might look at that and say, “It’s a convenient way of somebody looks at me, and I don’t have the same culpability that I would otherwise.”
[00:51:46] Chalene Johnson : Paraphrasing, he basically said what she did during those 18 minutes required multiple decisions that meant she had to think about the order of things. She had to get each child downstairs. She had to think about the order in which she was going to do this, how she was gonna use the exercise bands, basically how she did all of this in, like, 18 to 20 minutes.
[00:52:12] Chalene Johnson : She did all that because she had a plan, and her plan was to take her own life, and she thought that they would suffer if they didn’t have their mother. That gave prosecutors a fairly understandable narrative. They’re trying to convince the juries, okay, she was definitely sick, but she still was making choices, and she knew that those choices were wrong.
[00:52:41] Chalene Johnson : Okay, so Monday was not a total victory for the prosecution. Their two experts did disagree about her diagnosis, and that wasn’t great. Mack rejected her bipolar disorder. I’m like, how? I mean, I am a therapist because my best friend, Dr. Mikayla, is a therapist, and I… Don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure Pretty sure if you spend a lot of time with someone who’s a therapist, I think that makes you a therapist.
[00:53:10] Chalene Johnson : Don’t quote me. But the other expert, in this case, Dr. Helbron, he diagnosed her with bipolar II. Helbron also improperly brought Lindsay’s faith into question, and that was major. And so on Monday … Okay, so here’s what happened. Apparently, you’re not supposed to bring up a defendant’s faith. I didn’t know this.
[00:53:36] Chalene Johnson : I don’t know if this is something in their state alone, but he did. He brought up the idea of it being a sin. He talked about her Catholic faith, and it really pissed off the judge. The judge seriously reprimanded him. The defense stepped forward, and they’re like, “Okay, Your Honor, we’re gonna call for a mistrial.”
[00:53:59] Chalene Johnson : And I was like, “Oh my gosh, are they really gonna do this?” And he did ask for a mistrial The judge said, “No, I’m not going to declare this a mistrial. I’m going to instead instruct the jurors to forget what they heard.” I’m like, how do you do that? I mean, once you’ve heard it, you’ve heard it. But at the end of the day on Monday, most experts were commenting that, you know, it was a pretty strong day for the prosecution just based solely on expert testimony.
[00:54:34] Chalene Johnson : But as we all know, once the, in my opinion, the stronger litigator steps up to the plate, and if the stronger litigator has excellent cross-examination skills, as Reddington does, it’s over. And basically, Tuesday was, in my opinion, all about the defense. So during cross-examination, Reddington establishes the credibility, or goes over the credibility of these two witnesses.
[00:55:04] Chalene Johnson : He starts with Halperin, and he goes over all of his CV, all of his experience, and he points out that the only experience this expert has with postpartum mental illness dates all the way back to the late ’60s, when he wrote, co-authored a paper about postpartum illness with his father when he was working as a research assistant for his father, who was, I believe, a PhD as well.
[00:55:39] Chalene Johnson : But come on, you’re joking. Then he goes over all of his experience, and he’s like, “Okay, this is great. Yeah, this is fantastic. It’s about sexual assault and sexual misconduct. But, like, dude, do you have any experience whatsoever with postpartum illness?” And he had not published any research on postpartum psychosis.
[00:56:02] Chalene Johnson : And Reddington just walks him very carefully, slowly, and methodically through a series of questions where you say, “Well, do you agree that this is true?” “Yes.” “Well, then therefore, do you agree this is true?” “Yes.” “Well, therefore, then wouldn’t you agree then that this is true?” And basically, he got him to admit that Lindsay had suffered from severe mental illness and may have experienced psychosis.
[00:56:26] Chalene Johnson : He got the prosecution’s witness To admit that. Then he got him to acknowledge that the symptoms were consistent with postpartum depression, and also that she was experiencing adverse reactions to the medication. He got him to admit that he was relying on other people’s reports without doing the research himself.
[00:56:48] Chalene Johnson : He got him to admit that he made a report about the, exactly what happened after Patrick came onto the scene, but that he never listened to the 911 call, and he’s a hired witness. It’s shocking that he did not listen to the 911 call. Like, that, to me, I don’t know if that was a big deal to anyone else, but I, I couldn’t believe that.
[00:57:12] Chalene Johnson : I mean, as a paid expert, that’s, they have to examine the biggest pieces of evidence in this case, and he never listened to the actual recording. That’s crazy. Nonetheless, their expert did maintain that Lindsay was still criminally responsible, but the defense seriously damaged his credibility, his foundation, and what information he was using to base that conclusion.
[00:57:41] Chalene Johnson : So long and short of Tuesday’s testimony, I would say it is not finished. There is Dr., I forget his name, Seahoff maybe? He gave the prosecution some ground back. He questioned why the alleged voice suddenly appeared to command the killings and then disappeared, and immediately afterward it was gone. I think, and this is what we’ll end the conversation for today anyways, about this trial, I think the biggest thing, for me anyways, that came out of Tuesday was this The doctor who testified on Monday basically said that she could not have psychosis because there’s a difference between intrusive thoughts and genuine hallucinations that sound as though it’s from a voice outside your head.
